Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: biological

Psychiatry as a field, meanwhile, quivers with theoretical uncertainty. It has not become a sub-speciality of neurology, as one might have expected if mental illness mapped directly to neural behaviour. And common genetic variations with large effects on mental disorders are elusive. The various incarnations of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) have enabled diagnostic consistency and the objectification of mental illnesses. But the DSM has resulted in overlapping diagnoses, and contrived symptom-cluster checklists. At times, it impinges on the territory of healthy mental function. Allen Frances, chair of the task force that wrote the manual’s fourth edition in 1994, revolted against out-of-control mental diagnosis in his 2013 book DSM: Saving Normal.

Adrian Woolfson weighs up a study on the role of evolution in conditions such as depression and anxiety.

Read more

Project fear? Should we pay attention to American Jesuits?

But the fundamental ambition of transhumanism is more problematic. Its architects champion a use of technology to accelerate the evolution of humanity so radically that at the end of the process humanity as such would disappear. A superior posthuman being would emerge. According to Wikipedia, “Transhumanism is the intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally improving the human condition through applied reason, especially by developing and making widely available knowledge to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities.” From its inception, the abolition of human death and aging has been one of the goals of transhumanism as it engineers a new being freed from the biological constraints of the current human condition.

From its inception, the abolition of human death and aging has been one of the goals of transhumanism.

Two of the movement’s philosophers, Max More and David Pearce, have developed eloquent apologies for the transhumanist creed. But they also indicate the movement’s more ominous philosophical themes.

Read more

The 107-country Outer Space Treaty signed in 1967 prohibits nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons from being placed in or used from Earth’s orbit.

What they didn’t count on was the US Air Force’s most simple weapon ever: a tungsten rod that could hit a city with the explosive power of an intercontinental ballistic missile.

During the Vietnam War, the US used what it called “Lazy Dog” bombs. These were simply solid-steel pieces, less than 2 inches long, fitted with fins.

Read more

Human health depends on age and evolutionary history. Firstly, adaptation is age-specific, with Hamilton’s forces of natural selection leading to much greater adaptation at earlier ages than later ages. This of course is how evolutionary biologists explain the existence of aging in the first place. Secondly, when environmental conditions change, it takes surprisingly few generations for populations to adapt to such new conditions, at least at early ages when natural selection is intense. Thirdly, at later ages, when the forces of natural selection are weak, natural selection will often fail to produce adaptation to a selective environment that is not evolutionarily ancient. All three of these themes will be illustrated using both explicit mathematical theory and findings from experimental evolution. At the end of the presentation, we will apply these general scientific insights to the case of human evolutionary history, human aging, and optimal human diets.

Read more

Water bear. Moss piglet. Tardigrade.

The gentle teddy-bear features of this polyonymic animal belie its hardy nature.

Capable of withstanding dehydration and cosmic radiation and surviving temperatures as low as −450 F and as high as 300 F, this eight-limbed microscopic creature holds the key to one of biology’s greatest secrets — extreme survival.

Read more

There is a noble frontier in the making that is growing internationally at speeds yet to be comprehended. And this frontier goes by the name “Transhumanism,” which is the pursuit to overcome aging and all biological limitations via advanced science and technology. What started as nothing more than a fringe concept among futurist circles has now become a global movement consisting of philosophers, political activists, scientists, and technologists.

But when it comes to Transhumanism here in the United States, there was one particular event in mind that helped introduce this movement into the national dialogue. That event is now famously known as the “Immortality Bus tour,” for which was led by then-presidential candidate Zoltan Istvan, representing the U.S. Transhumanist Party.

In this documentary, then-presidential candidate Zoltan Istvan travels across the country, spreading the word of Transhumanism—for the overcoming of aging using advanced science and technology!

Read more

It’s been almost 10 years since I wrote the first versions of Hamlet’s Transhumanist Dilemma and A Transhumanist Manifesto. And a lot has changed. Including my point of view.

I started with Hamlet. With asking a question: Will technology replace biology?

At the time I felt that this was the contemporary version of Shakespeare’s original human dilemma: to be or not to be.

Read more

What if woolly mammoths could walk the planet once again? De-extinction – or the process of creating an organism which is a member of, or closely resembles, an extinct species – was once a sci-fi fantasy only imaginable in films like “Jurassic Park.” But recent biological and technological breakthroughs indicate that reviving extinct creatures could become a reality. Even if advancements get us there, should we do it?

Read more